Monthly Archives: December 2011

I used to joke that Osama bin Laden was probably hiding out all these years at MSNBC, since nobody ever looks there for anything. The latest cable TV ratings bear this out. Fox News is killing everybody, taking the top 13 places in the ratings. Turns out that even re-runs of the O’Reilly Factor do better than MSNBC’s best show. You can look up the whole list here, but here’s »

Seeing folk/country artist Suzy Bogguss up close performing at the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis this past spring was one of my 2011 highlights. I wrote about the show briefly in “Aces.” I loved Suzy and the show. John Hinderaker caught up with Suzy when she returned to Minnesota this fall. John is a serious fan of country music, so I was particularly interested in his take. »

That is what Andrew McCarthy thinks. He notes the significance of President Obama’s recruiting Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to mediate secret negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban: The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. … For those who may be unfamiliar with him, »

This past Monday night there was a riot at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. It was the rare Twin Cities story that drew national attention. John was able to contribute an eyewitness report from one of his daughters in our post “Riot at the Mall of America.” What happened? We still don’t know the origin of the riot. I’ve been looking over the past week for the Star »

It’s probably not a good sign when a presidential candidate cries in public. At any rate, the associations aren’t positive. We have the legendary tears that seemed to mark the fall of Ed Muskie. Muskie was standing in the snows of New Hampshire, campaigning in the 1972 New Hampshire primary and defending the honor of his wife from the depredations of the publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader. The moment is »

We haven’t paid much attention to the Occupiers lately; nor, for the most part, has anyone else. But every now and then they continue to endear themselves to the American public. Like last night, when four members of Occupy Charlotte–including their media spokesman!–burned two American flags next to their encampment: Officers said they noticed the suspects lighting something on fire directly in front of the Occupy camp along Trade Street »

Normally I don’t do movie reviews since the only first-run movies I typically see are kid movies. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) But I was treated to an advance screening of The Iron Lady, which opened yesterday in selected theaters in LA and New York to qualify Meryl Streep for her inevitable and mostly deserved Oscar for best actress. As all of the other early reviews say, she »

So Paul Krugman phoned in his periodic “Keynes Was Right” column today, arguing that the Obama Porkulus failed only because, like “true” Communism, it wasn’t tried vigorously or faithfully enough. I wonder if Krugman also credits Keynes’s views on Jews, which British blogger Damian Thompson of The Telegraph brings to our attention. From Keynes’s diary: [Jews] have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, »

The phone has been ringing for quite a while now–I would say since President Obama took office in January 2009. Mr. President, there are millions of unemployed on the line, and they think it’s an emergency. But Obama is still snoozing. Michael Ramirez illustrates the point: »

So I’m out on the Left Coast this week and next, enjoying some sunshine and warm weather (forecast to be sunny and 72 here on the central coast on New Year’s day–sorry to all our midwestern friends), and since the light is so good, I did up this two minute video about some of California’s renewable energy “triumphs”: »

It appears that a Power Line reader wrote directly to Prof. Michael Schlesinger–the subject of yesterday’s diversion about crew cuts–to taunt him: Hey, Mike, I just read your email to Chris Matthews taking him to task for his anti-crew cut bigotry. I was pumping my fist in the air when I saw a picture of you. My God, man! Your HAIR!!! It looks like it’s been chewed by goats. Loosen »

It is very odd that, election cycle after election cycle, the same handful of states play an outsized role in the presidential selection process. Here in Minnesota, our preferences apparently don’t matter–has there been an election in modern times in which Minnesota’s electors have been chosen in time to make a difference? In recent decades, the first state to vote, via caucuses, has been Iowa. Iowa has thereby pulled even »

My office is on the 25th floor of an office building in downtown Minneapolis. On any day when I look out my windows, I see peregrine falcons cruising, looking for prey–pigeons, mostly. It is not unusual to see a falcon dive-bomb a pigeon, bring his carcass to a ledge on my building, and eat him. Concrete canyons like the ones my office overlooks have turned out to be excellent habitats »

Britain’s National Health Service has taken a lot of heat because patients often wait a year or more for operations, and many die in the meantime. The NHS could have responded to this criticism by making its operations more efficient so that waiting times could be reduced, like a private company would, for fear of losing business to competitors. But in government medicine, such incentives are lacking. So the NHS »

At PJ Media, Spengler (David P. Goldman) draws a provocative parallel between Iran’s mullahs and Ron Paul: Rep. Ron Paul’s defense of Iran’s nuclear weapons program should surprise no one. The same resentment motivates Ron Paul and the Iranian leadership — a paranoid hostility toward a world that is swiftly changing and has little mercy, and a Millenarian desire to return to a mythical, untroubled past. Get rid of the »

Ever since I appeared at a conference on climate change in the Midwest about four years ago with Professor Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois I’ve been on the good professor’s email distribution list, usually receiving several communications a day. They are usually links to news stories and journal articles about climate alarm, but occasionally copies of his own indignant missives. The good professor is a “goes-to-11” global warming »

You probably don’t need to be told. You probably have figured it out on your own. Yet the answer to the question is profoundly important. It opens the door to the question of limited versus unlimited government, freedom versus tyranny, man versus the state. A certain prominent GOP presidential candidate reminds me, however, on something like a daily basis that he needs instruction in the answer to the question. It’s »